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Economic and Social Council
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues First Session
New York, May 13-24, 2002, The United Nations

Intervention by Charmaine White FaceItem 6 – Environment



Thank you Mr. Chairperson. My name is Charmaine White Face. I am Oglala Lakota from the Tetuwan Oyate with the Teton Sioux Nation Treaty Council. For the Indigenous peoples, I am also a mother and a grandmother, and great-grandmother. For the member states, my qualifications are that I was a teacher at the college level of environmental science and I am now a writer.

First, I want to thank the Creator for letting us all be here today at this wonderful and miraculous event. I would like to thank those, all of those who have worked for years to make this event possible. I would like to thank my elder relative, the late Chief Garfield Grass Rope who believed in me so that I would speak here today. I also want to thank my elder relatives, Tony Black Feather and Clifford White Eyes, who also believed in me so that I would speak here today. And I offer my prayers with the prayers of many others who offer their prayers for the members of the Permanent Forum that the Creator will bless them with courage, fortitude, wisdom, generosity, and strength as they lead all of us in the human family on this new path. I thank you for your giving me this opportunity to speak.

The colonization process has tried to take away our identity as Indigenous peoples whether we are Lakota, Filipino or from Africa. Our identity cannot be changed by man-made laws. Can a man-made law make a tropical palm tree grow in the snowy regions of a mountain? No. A man-made law that changes or tries to change an Indigenous person into a form of the colonizer destroys the Indigenous identity of that person. This is a form of genocide.

Today, the global environment is being rapidly destroyed. Yet for tens of thousands of years, our peoples were able to live and flourish physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally without destroying this very same global environment. We all know that industrialization and technology has caused this global environmental sickness. Yet the very people who could teach the colonizers how to truly live with the Earth, not in domination of the Earth, are being constantly pushed to change their identity and become like the colonizer.

Treaties were made for specific land areas between colonizers and Indigenous people for the purpose of continuing the lifeways of human beings with that specific environment. The upholding of those treaties today could still restore those lifeways and heal those specific environments. For example, for many of us Lakota people this would mean a restoration of Natural Law which would give new life to our beautiful plains, the center of Turtle Island, in the center of the United States, and new life for the buffalo upon whom we have always depended for the health of our peoples. We are the Pte Oyate, the Buffalo People. In order to thrive as Lakota People, we must be able to live with our older brother, the buffalo.

It is imperative that the member states of the UN broaden their perspectives now to see that the lifeways of Indigenous peoples are the only cure for the environmental sickness all over the world. The member states of the UN need, desperately need the wisdom of Indigenous peoples. We are the elders of the human family. The "natural resources" that the industrialized governments depend on will soon be depleted. How will they live then? This need by the member states of the UN to heal the environmental sickness of the world is further evidence of the need for a permanent budget and secretariat for the Permanent Forum. Additionally, it is important that the Permanent Forum, in preparing its Final Report, consult with a duly authorized committee of Rapporteurs selected by the Indigenous Caucus. Only with these resources can we adequately share this wisdom and fulfill what the Honorable High Commissioner for Human Rights requested on Monday; "that we give at least equal weight to what indigenous peoples can do for the United Nations." The member states of the United Nations need the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples. I say these words for all my relations, for Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth and all her children, all my relations. Mitaku Oyasin. Pila maya, Wopila tonka. Thank you very much.

 

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